Wednesday 15 January 2003

Pic of the day: Map of Porcupine Nation. Huh? Porcupine Nation?

Urge to meddle

I may have mentioned that I have again taking to playing SimCountry, or "Game of the worlds" as it is officially called. (The web address is still simcountry.com, though.) I even managed to get back my old country on White Giant, appropriately named Porcupine Nation.

The first time I played, last spring, I kept building stuff like you do in strategy games, and in time my country was sunk by a mountain of debt. This time, I resolved to play more cautiously. I set corporate taxes up from 30 to 50 % and build roads and railroads a bit each day (ca 2-3 months game time) until I had enough. I bought no more schools and high schools than the growth in population demanded, probably quite a bit less. And every month, my little country ran a surplus. All was well for a long while.

Then I noticed that there was new debt. Eventually I realized that some companies went out of business and dumped their debt on the state. (There are no truly private corporations in SimCountry, all are owned either by the state or by a multinational conglomerate. When a corporation closes, the debt and any cash left goes to the owner.) So my country's artificial intelligence bureaucracy built new companies but some of them went bust and dumped their debt on the country. I turned off auto-building and decided to be very careful about what companies I bought. I also looked at trade policies for the various types of goods.

And before I knew, I was sucked back in. It is so easy to meddle when you have the power. To tell a company to sell at this particular price to that particular other company, or to the state. To try to outguess the market. Just like a real politician. And we all know how that goes, don't we?

***

"Don't just do something; sit there!" was the advice of The Economist to the world's politicians. This is indeed a necessary admonition. The lust to meddle in the market is hard to resist. For instance here in Norway, where a dry fall and a cold winter has sent the price of electricity through the roof. Demand is high, supply is low, and so the market dictates a high price. If people don't want to pay that much, they can go look for other energy sources. There are a few about, at least for heating. Also this may prompt some to think about insulation, heat trapping and heat recycling. All good and useful things. But politicians from the opposition (which is in majority, albeit a very fractured majority) demand that something be done.

A leader in the electric power business commented: "Some people will have problems paying their utility bills, and this is sad. But it is a social problem, not a problem with the power industry." And this, of course, is the truth. The market works perfectly. If prices remain at this level, new sources of electricity will be built. If it is only temporary, the high price will keep people from using as much as they did before. And some of the smelting industry has decided to stop production and sell their cheap contract power on the market, especially since the demand for raw metal is low on the world market while the demand for electricity is high on the local market.

But the urge to meddle is very hard to resist. For now, we can only hope and pray that wisdom will prevail. And perhaps urge politicians to play SimCountry. ^_^ "Try before you destroy!"